The Gorge

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

The FUCKING bitch!

Ace was tied up in human knots by the raft guide, Bowie. Ace was used to kicking ass, but he’d always picked his victims with care. He didn’t have size, so he counted on the element of surprise. Out of a dark alley with a tire iron, up from the backseat with a cheap pocketknife, in the middle of the night with a time bomb.

Right now, with the raft pitching and the drizzle seeping down, the fog closing in and the dumb cunt pointing the FBI agent’s Glock at both of them, with Bowie flexing muscles and rage, Ace wasn’t sure whether he wanted her to shoot or not.

First off, if she pulled the trigger, odds were even she’d miss and plug a nickel-sized hole in his guts. Second, she was such an uppity, highfalutin, educated bitch that she probably couldn’t kill somebody in hot blood, even when that somebody could take the gun away from her, hold them both as prisoners, and turn them over to the cops.

Third, she could miss them both, knock a slow hole in the raft, and they’d wallow down into the churning water, knocking against rocks and sucking for air.

Fourth (and Ace wasn’t sure he could count much higher, because the Bowie ass-wipe was squeezing off the oxygen to his brain), Clara’s eyes had gone a little cold and distant, kind of like his own mother’s eyes had looked the first time she’d caught him stealing coins from her purse.

Like she wasn’t sure.

Just like an uppity bitch, a woman, a fucking devil’s apple-eater.

All this smart talk about feelings and caring and even that ball’s-over cuntfest word “love,” a word the Bible didn’t really have all that much use for except that part in John 3:16 where the Big Love went down.

Sacrifice. That was what it was all about, and he didn’t think Clara had seen the light yet.

Fucking bitch.

He kicked upward, hoping to knee Bowie in the nuts, but the dude was too fast. Bowie brought a fist down hard against Ace’s ear, ringing tiny sleigh bells in his head.

“Shoot!” He didn’t recognize his own voice. The air from his lungs flung needles up the length of his throat.

The fading whine of the bells mingled with the constant wash of the rushing river. White noise, white might, and might always made right.

“I can’t do it,” Clara shouted, clinging to the grab loop with her left hand.

Bowie, his weight pressed on top of Ace, ripping the top buttons off his shirt, turned to Clara. “Give me the gun.”

As Bowie reached his hand toward her, Ace twisted to the side, a move he’d learned when his father had kicked the living shit out of him for dropping a carton of milk. Bowie was nothing like Daddy, because Bowie was fighting for survival and Daddy had delivered the goods just for the sheer hell of it. Daddy was a lot more desperate, a lot better at the game. Ace lifted and rolled, and now had Bowie on his hip. The tour guide, off balance because of reaching for the gun, bounced against the swollen side of the raft. Ace sprang from his knees and hit Bowie with his shoulder, knocking the ornery son of a bitch overboard.

Bowie caught the grab loop as he went into the river, rocking the raft up on its side. As Ace and Clara tumbled in the direction of the tilt, the angle grew more severe. Two of the backpacks bounced out of the raft and into the rapids, swept away in the swift, dark froth.

Ace’s belly flopped onto the same side of the raft to which Bowie clung. The man’s hand was inches away, fingers clenched around the nylon rope. Ace did the first thing that popped into his head: He opened his mouth and sank his teeth into the taut hand.

Ace’s teeth were no marvels of modern dentistry. He still had his molars, though they were cracked from his love of hard candy. From the age of seven, he had chewed tobacco, first sneaking pinches from his dad’s plug of Beechnut, soon escalating to swiping entire pouches of tobacco at the local gas station. Several years spent camping in the remote peaks of Dakota, where he’d met up with fellow survivalists, militants, Klansmen, and the occasional Charles Manson worshipper, had stripped him of any remaining hygiene habits. Those seeking to tear down society, to bring about the destruction of order viewed through their distorted lenses as oppression, weren’t much interested in brushing their teeth.

But the broken and chipped bits of enamel that stippled Ace’s gums were plenty good enough for this job.

Bowie’s flesh was salty from sweat and tasted like old fish, but the man’s blood was sweet-probably a pure-breed, from good English stock, true white meat.

So this is what them angels get all worked up about. Getting washed in the blood, hallelujah.

Clara leaned against the tilt of the raft, losing her grip on the Glock, the flashlight momentarily blinding Ace. The gun plopped into the pool of water that had collected in the bottom of the raft. Ace jerked his head back, bringing a shred of Bowie’s skin with him. Blood ran from the gaping gash in the back of his hand, but the dude held on.

Ace could almost respect him. Almost. But it was God’s job to judge, not Ace’s.

He reached along the waistband of his camou trousers, feeling blind along the soggy seams for the cold grip of the Python. He’d have a hell of time navigating the raft downstream with only Clara’s help, but no way could he trust the dude now.

But maybe he didn’t need to be in such a big hurry, since Crew-cut was down for the count, maybe dead, which would all but seal Ace’s death sentence if he were to stand trial.

But his judgment, like that of Bowie’s, would come later, in front of the Big Throne, and all his actions now would serve as proof of his faith. Because he still had plenty of the Lord’s work to do, and a few of the guilty would have to die so that many innocents might live.

The raft flopped again, riding up a white, curling swell of water. Bowie flung his other arm out of the water and grappled for the rope, but his fingers slid off the rubberized nylon. Bowie was stretched out behind the raft, bodysurfing, the Unegama battering his body as he clung to the grab loop with one bloody hand.

Just as Ace clutched the Python, the raft bounced against a protruding boulder, tossing Clara against him. He shoved her away. “Watch yourself, damn it.”

Ace yanked the pistol free. Clara wrapped her arms around him.

“Don’t shoot him,” she shouted.

“Whose side are you on, bitch?” He shoved her away.

Bowie, with only his head and one arm out of the water, opened his mouth to speak, but a spurt of storm-stained water splashed into his face and drowned his words.

Ace settled on his knees in the raft, which had taken on nearly a foot of water now. He figured another foot or so and the boat would swamp. That was okay, though, assuming the backpacks he’d swiped from the rafting group contained food and a means of lighting a fire. But there were only three of the backpacks left, including his.

He pointed the Python at Bowie. Feed the fishes or feed the angels, it was all the same to Ace.

“Let go,” he said.

“We need him,” Clara yelled, getting tossed against the side of the raft again. Ace held on with one hand gripping the rope, trying to steady the pistol. Along the riverbanks, large rocks, strips of vegetation, and the dark bones of giant trees sped by in a blur. The mist capped the top of the forest, obscuring the high walls of the gorge, but Ace could feel their weight, millions of years of God-stacked stone.

“You stupid bitch,” Ace yelled, letting go of the rope to wipe the drizzle from his eyes. No good, his sleeve was soaked. “We can’t trust him now. You seen whose side he’s on.”

“We can’t make it down the river without him.”

As if to second her words, the raft made a sudden spin, as if hung up on a submerged log. Bowie winced as his body slammed against something underwater. The raft jostled along a ribbed run of water, then reached the relative calm of an eddy. Here, with the roar of the river suppressed, Ace could concentrate on a clean shot.

Not that he cared if Bowie died bloody and ugly, drowning before his heart pumped out the last of its blood. No, he still had pride. The Dakota Sons of Freedom had trained him well, even if they’d eventually kicked him out for his radical views.

Well, fuck them, too. They didn’t have the guts to piss out the blood of tyrants and patriots alike, the way the Good White Man Thomas Jefferson had said. Revolution wasn’t a fixed event in American history. It was a constant turning of the wheel, with God pouring the gas. Some took it personally, others were just too damned gutless.

And bigger than the fight to keep America free was the war to keep God’s way.

The river divided into three channels, with dense, low growth clinging to the islands. A pebbly sandbar lay to the right, but without anyone working a paddle, they were at the mercy of the current. The raft skirled along a bladelike wave, pushing toward slower water.

Bowie, now able to touch bottom, said, “I guess you have to shoot me, because I’m not letting go.”

“The captain goes down with the ship, huh?”

“Ace?”

The bitch’s whining was getting on his nerves. Once they made it to the lake, he’d get rid of her. He wouldn’t have any trouble, once he stole a car, to find another starry-eyed cunt who wanted to rub against greatness. The next one probably wouldn’t be as good-looking or young (Clara was one of those precious gifts God granted him once in a while, the way a fat man might occasionally leave a bit of meat on the bone he tossed to his dog). But she’d have a warm, wet hole when he needed it and, most important, she’d be there to take the pain.

“Maybe I ought to just leave both of you here and take the raft myself,” Ace said to her.

Bowie rose higher out of the water. It was to his waist now. In the deepening darkness, he might have been a ghost formed from the surrounding mist.

“Ace, you can’t leave me,” she said. “Ever.”

Bowie was almost close enough to reach for the Python. Ace, in the calmer water, sighted down the barrel at the pale, river-drenched brow, right between the fire-filled eyes.

“See your ass on Judgment Day, except I’m figuring you’ll have a seat way in back,” he said to Bowie.

Clara leaped from the flooded bowels of the raft just as Ace squeezed the trigger. She didn’t knock his arm away, the way it happened in movies, because she wasn’t that fast. Still, the movement of the raft was enough to send the shot high and wide, its report booming up the river and reverberating between the slopes of the gorge.

As the shot died away, an even louder thunder sounded. “I’m pregnant,” she said.

Ace was trying those words in his head when the tail end of the gunshot’s echo changed pitch and gained altitude.

No, it wasn’t a final echo.

It was the trumpet blast of the angels, hidden somewhere high in the twilight mist.